Found in both spruce and mixed conifer forests, it is a fairly common species in the Pacific Northwest region of North America, with a northerly range extending to Alaska.

Its fruit bodies are medium-sized, with velvety, brown to blackish caps up to 2–9 cm (0.79–3.54 in) in diameter bearing a distinct pointed umbo.

The mushroom oozes a whitish latex when it is cut, and injured tissue eventually turns a dull reddish color.

The eastern North American and European species Lactarius lignyotus is closely similar in appearance, but can be distinguished by its differing range.

The cap surface is dry and velvety, finely wrinkled over the center, azonate (without concentric lines), and dark sooty brown to blackish.

The gills are attached to subdecurrent (running shortly down the length of the stem), narrow, crowded, not forked, white at first, and become creamy buff with age.

The stem is 2.5–8 cm (1.0–3.1 in) long, 5–15 mm (0.2–0.6 in) thick,[6] nearly equal in width throughout, dry, solid, unpolished or velvety, and a paler brown than the cap.

[2] The spores are spherical, and ornamented with warts and ridges that form a partial reticulum (a net-like pattern of lines) with prominences up to 2 μm high.

[7] The basidia (the spore-bearing cells) are 38–56 by 10–13 μm, club-shaped, four-spored, and hyaline when mounted in a dilute solution of potassium hydroxide (KOH).

There are abundant cheilocystidia (cystidia found on the edge of gills), with contents ranging in color from dingy yellow to hyaline in KOH.

[2] Lactarius lignyotellus and L. lignyotus are similar to L. fallax, and they are all associated with Picea and Abies; examination of microscopic features cannot be used to distinguish between them.